Posted
by
Soulskillon Saturday March 29, 2014 @12:34PM
from the caught-with-your-hand-in-the-cookie-jar dept.

Advocatus Diaboli sends this news from Der Spiegel:
"Documents show that Britain's GCHQ intelligence service infiltrated German Internet firms and America's NSA obtained a court order to spy on Germany and collected information about the chancellor in a special database. Is it time for the country to open a formal espionage investigation? ... A secret NSA document dealing with high-ranking targets has provided further indications that Merkel was a target. The document is a presentation from the NSA's Center for Content Extraction, whose multiple tasks include the automated analysis of all types of text data. The lists appear to contain 122 country leaders. Twelve names are listed as an example, including Merkel's."

And if this news was about Russians caught spying on USA and Britain, there'd be a bunch of people foaming at the mouth declaring "act of war" instead of the recently common "oh well, that's just what they do" dismissive brush-off.

Who in the world thinks that Russia DOESN'T spy on the US and GB (and France and Germany and everyone else for that matter). FFS - we ALL do it to everybody else.

This is like complaining that farts stink, and somebody just found out that we left a beige cloud in the restroom. Somebody light a match, close the door, and get on with it. In polite society you hold your breath and pretend like nothing happened, because the next time the remains of the burrito might be yours.

Now, you could argue that the US and Germany are not friends, but the politicians would argue they were. You could argue the US and Russia were friends, but then you'd be wrong.

The problem with the entire US mentality of "it's fine to spy on other nations" is that GCHQ is British, and has the same idea, and shares their information _on you_ with your intelligence services, and anyone else who wants to know.

The NSA is using terrorism as an excuse for industrial espionage, which then is probably then used to further enrich the already wealthy. I wouldn't be surprised if the NSA is spying for Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan to get inside information so they can trade accordingly. This would at least be consistent with the pattern of using tax payer's money to enrich a few people.

There is no evidence that the NSA has participated in any such thing. Snowden accused them of industrial espionage but I have yet to see a single leak that confirms it. If it were happening, Der Spiegel would have released it already.

Okay, so how much of what the NSA did is clearly unconstitutional? The Fourth Amendment says the government may not do unreasonable searches and seizures. The NSA, AFAIK, seized nothing. It took as much metadata as it could about emails, but is that unreasonable? It's like noting down addresses at the Post Office, in that the routing data cannot be private. They recorded the contents of the emails automatically, with no human seeing them except under court order (and individual employees breaking the

The Fourth Amendment says the government may not do unreasonable searches and seizures. The NSA, AFAIK, seized nothing.

If you were going to use lawyer logic, you shouldn't have bothered replying. If this sort of technology had been used against the founding fathers, it would have been unconstitutional.

It took as much metadata as it could about emails, but is that unreasonable?

Yes.

It's like noting down addresses at the Post Office

No, it's not. You cannot compare data to mail. The actual data is no less private than the "metadata" (*Which is just data!*), so why not collect that, too? How is that any more private? It isn't; not in the case of data. I expect that data that is sent over the Internet (Whether it's deemed "metadata" or not.) be left alo

If this sort of technology had been used against the founding fathers, it would have been unconstitutional.

Or rather, its unconstitutionality would have been more explicit. In any case, it's still pretty damn clear that it's unconstitutional to gather everyone's communications, if you care at all about the spirit of the constitution. Comparing data to mail isn't going to help.

Well, the very least you should do is not get caught. Especially if you just said a few weeks ago that you're so deeply, incredibly sorry that some overzealous idiots at the NSA spied on your good friend Merkel and that you promise that it will never ever happen again, pinky swear with cherry on top.

A criminal act is a criminal act, get caught and you should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, spying is not an excuse for a criminal act. Germany as well as all other countries should actively pursue those involved and prosecute them to the full extent of the law, keeping in mind the death penalty for espionage still applies in the majority of countries. You want to behave in a criminal fashion expect the consequences you deserve, especially keep in mind there is no statute of limitation on espi

Are you sure about that? It's quite clear from the historical record that that's exactly what "we" wanted then (the Axis were extremely reluctant to drag the "sleeping giant" into the war, at least until we forced their hand in Indonesia) and it's well understood that Washington had advance knowledge of the impending attack at Pearl and didn't warn the Fleet...

Do you really think things have changed so much that T.P.T.B. would be able to resist another opportunity to manipulate our nationalistic sensibiliti

There were too MANY warning signs... half the world was already at war, and it's very unlikely that the signal of any legitimate intel that Pearl Harbor was about to happen could have risen above the noise of everything else the intel community had to keep up with at that time. How many incorrect tips and hints do you think came through, and to whom, and from whom? It's easy to find that needle in a haystack with 70 years of hindsight, but at the time, with everyone gathering intel but without the technol

People in Washington were sure an attack was coming, but they didn't know when or where. Ten days before the Pearl Harbor attack, the Army and Navy sent separate messages to the commanders in the Pacific warning of imminent attack. Some commanders, like in the Canal Zone, were as prepared as they could get.

The Japanese sent a message to be delivered to the US Secretary of State at a particular time, and there was an effort to warn Pearl Harbor about it, but for technical reasons the message arrived aft

Could someone from the US please tell me and convince me why Germany should still be friends with the USA? 'Cause the USA are certainly NOT behaving like a friend. More like a foe and bully who thinks Germany is an enemy.

The US actually is the schoolyard bully of international politics. Just in case someone hasn't noticed that yet. The US exhibits every behaviour of the classic schoolyard bully. He beats up the weaker kids but does not want to get into a fight with anyone that could stand up for himself. He steals the lunch money from those that can't defend themselves. Or, in a more modern form, the bully "buys" your cellphone for a buck so you can't say he stole it from you. He bought it, see? Same goes for resources, on an international scale. Should a teacher (or the UN) take a stern look at them, they'll start smooching up to them and pretend that they're gonna help the teacher to keep the smaller bullies in reign, and since that's quite comfortable, they'll gladly take that offer.

International politics and schoolyard politics ain't that different. It's the same shit on a bigger scale, that's all, but the silly billys are the same.

Nonsense. WWII could have been completely avoided if we knew about the plans to remilitarizr the rhine before it happened. A german genersl wrote in his diary that if any of the countries party to the treaty of versalles would have enforced the terms of the treaty, germany would have been stopped well before it became a war.

We now know that Russia tried to colapse the US dollar in 2008 and china took steps to avoid it because of how heavily invested they were at the time. We know sanctions did not work on I

I would thimk taining delusionally ignorant of history would be more funny to people looking at you instead of yourself. But yes, it is a well known fact that Germany violated conditions of their treaty in order to raise the military might before invading other countries.

And sactions o. Iraq were neccedary because they weren't complying with the terms of the cease fire from the first gulf war.

I take it you went to public school in the US. I understand why you post AC. I would be embarrased to have you post

Nothing you said invalidates what i said or contradicts my knowlege of history.

All you did was state details of what i stated. Perhaps your definition of flawed is different from the rest of the world's.

Oh, and BTW, the significance of Germany building an army and that being ignored is that the treaty of versalles forbid them from building a military or militarizing their manufacturing sector. If this wasn't ignored, WWII would have been stopped before it happened.

I don't really care that they were humiliated. Part of the terms for ending WWI was restrictions on Germany's military and their military industry. If those restrictions would have been enforced indtead of ignored, germany could never have became a powerhouse that it did and there wouldn't have been a war that consummed most of Europe, northern africa, or the baltic states and Russia.

All we are doing is dancing with the same facts. You are focused on the why and i'm saying if we didn't allow them to gain th

It was exactly that attitude that made WW2 possible in the first place. If you tried to outlaw German rearmament, they would just have ignored you. Now what? You are a democracy and you cannot motivate your population for yet another war. Right until before WW2, neither France nor England wanted to go to war. And it took Pearl Harbor to give Roosevelt finally enough backing in Congress and population to go to war.

And that is pretty much what actually happened. German rearmed and nobody gave a shit. Yeah, in

Lol.. i'm not disputing how history played out. I'm saying that a minor change- one that would cause you to label a country a bully- would have made a huge difference in how it played out.

Spying on allies as well as adversaries, taking actions before they turn into another world war or perhaps even a significant war is what you call being a bully. Getting reelected is insignificant to doing the right thing. This is how you can tell the real leaders from the snake charmers. Although sometimes it takes some

I think of the US more as the star player who has gone to seed, and is only now just starting to realise it. He still think of himself as the hero of the team (and indeed, his skills are still exemplary - not what they used to be, but nothing to laugh at either). But nowadays, fitness is not what it should be, too many nights out, too many scandals, too many occasions where his friends had to hush up some indiscretion or other.

When you consider that Germany is doing the same to every country on the planet you begin to understand why this whole Snowden/NSA/Spying thing is not news except to those suffering from terminal naivete. Of course every other country is doing the same... so at the end of the day it's all equal.

Yes. Germany has it's intelligence service (called BND. Bundesnachrichtendienst), but it does nowhere the same things with the same scope as what the NSA is doing. Not even close. And in particular not on a supposed ally and friend. Why are you an ally if you can't trust them?

You are paranoid. You (the US) think that everyone is your enemy. Guess who has the same stance? North Korea.And ironically that's exactly what will one day isolate you, like North Korea. Distrusting and bullying everyo

I assume BND has been collaborating with US intellicenge a lot. Now, of course, it appears that anybody in Germany having collaborated with NSA (and it's brethen) or GHCQ should be considered a traitor and be put on trial.

Really, every European Intelligence Agency should be purged from persons who advocate international cooperation. And purged such a way that several genrations of intelligence people will think twice about "exchanging information".

Well until there's a German version of Snowden, we don't know what the BND is doing. That said, it's an extremely safe bet they spy on the US because there is no treaty between the two countries that makes it illegal.

Re 'The time Germany wanted money from the US were about 60 years ago."
Yes the NSA help with a new expanding West German telephone and later data network was great for catching East German spies and other groups incompatible with West German democracy.
What West Germany was very slow to understand was that with the NSA they had many other nations staff, contractors getting all of the same West German communications and political insight over decades for free.
The GCHQ was very interesting in the West Germ

Following the shutdown of services from Mastercard and Visa in Russia, he is pushing for a russian payment system. At least he is facing his responsibilities, not like european leaders who, even facing the evidence that they are spied, won't do anything and still rely on US products.

We must ban Cisco equipment and Microsoft/Apple systems from our governments offices, once and for all. There are alternative solutions available, let's develop them, let's deploy them. Before, there was a risk. Now there is a fact. So what are we waiting for ?

The question is what Germany, the Netherlands, France, Belgium and Denmark signed up for when sharing their nations telco systems in bulk with the UK and USA.
A one way deal with Germany, the Netherlands, France, Belgium and Denmark getting extra support in other mil areas vs the USA and UK looking at lucrative trade deals?
Now German private interest and firms with world wide contracts have to face the reality of their own German gov actively, over generations working against German exports, technical secr

Why do we have to be shocked? I wasn't shocked when Snowden 'revealed' the NSA's domestic spying. I wasn't shocked when the DMCA passed. I wasn't shocked when the government took over airports and started molesting anyone who wanted to get on a plane. I'm not shocked that our government spies on friendly countries. The notion that people in power cannot be trusted is not shocking to me in the least. I do not get shocked; I get angry.

So people are upset about the NSA spying on companies and a country that was willing to look the other way on some very questionable practices ?

A little reality check here. George Washington was one of our first spymasters,http://www.amazon.com/George-W... [amazon.com]And the value of intelligence information to our well being has not decreased one bit since the revolution.

German companies are some of the biggest arms dealers in the world and have sold arms to regimes that are hostile to the US. Likewise, you'd expect German satellite data providers and German financial service providers to do business with groups that are hostile to the US. And German governments have been trying to make trade deals and agreements that harm the US. The German government itself was monitoring many of its parliamentarians for anti-democratic communist activities, and Germany is a hotbed of Neo

Germany lags the USA and Russia in arms sales. Even the numbers can be tricky with smaller nations e.g. the UK firms doing very well out of US needs during the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A... [wikipedia.org]

We aren't playing a game of "who is morally superior". We're talking about whether the US has a reasonable national security interest in spying on Germany, and it does, as long as Germany remains a large exporter of advanced weapon systems.

West/Germany opened its telco system up the NSA, GCHQ - with that would have come very few conditions - Germany would not spy on the US and UK.
The US would help Germany with a few unrelated mil projects and other systems or hardware.
Germany knew it was a one way agreement but to have German staff supporting junk encryption and help track German firms is getting to be a hard sell.
German political leaders have to work out if they want to share conversations with 5++ other nations and their contractors. Or

"agrees to it or likes it" is kind of hard to work via German telcos without local support. Long term its down to the elected political leaders of Germany to ponder their exports role.
As for other "exporters" you may recall http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L... [wikipedia.org] or
Domestic audiences in the EU want their value added high skilled export jobs. They are tired of seeing their very public expensive trade missions return empty handed.

Everyone speeds while driving eventually. Does this suddenly mean that speed laws should be ignored? Laws are in place for a reason. "But everyone else is doing it!" didn't work when you were 13, and it sure as fuck doesn't work when you're an adult.

She doesn't have to ally with the Russians, all she has to do is refuse to lift a finger to facilitate some trade dispute; decide to prioritize meetings with diplomats from other countries, not bother to pursue some treaty or other the US thinks is important for it to have an impact.

Seriously. These are senior politicians, not teenagers.

Right. Teenagers aren't as corrupt.:-p

In all seriousness though, they are human beings like the rest of us. They remember favors, and they remember those that have embarras

Not quite. The situation might be a good business opportunity for countries with high tech capability like Japan, Germany, maybe even Poland. Make the infrastructure hardware that's absolutely unhackable. That might put Cisco, Juniper, Dropbox, MS Azure, etc., out of business.

Because none of them would ever DREAM of spying on anyone, right?
Jesus-On-A-Moped, every nation spies on every other nation to the extend that they can do so and have done for the last few thousand years at least and will likely always do so.

> Other nations can distrust anything they wish, but they have not other useful alternatives than to deal with us, they are our bitches.

That is true in case of some technologies like chips which are expensive to independently develop for less rich/advanced nations. But a good deal of software stuff is quite replaceable, with minimal pain. There are open source solutions or foreign services that are only slightly behind proprietary or US hosted solutions/services. The current surveillance situation simply

Fuck all these other countries. You can't stop us anyway, we are the mightiest, richest, most powrerful nation on Earth and we do whatever the fuck we want.

And Americans wonder why they have a reputation for being both arrogant and uninformed...

Ironically, this is exactly what many of the beneficiaries of, um, your foreign policy would love you to do: take all your military kit and, respectfully, piss off.

The problem is that your trampling on "weaker" nations is kind of a large part of your being "mighty" and rich (well, one marginal fraction of you anyway) and your leaders are unlikely to give that up.

It's a troll. I wouldn't be surprised if the original poster actually gets pouty about "Americans" too and wrote that in some attempt at sarcasm or humor.

You, and the AC above, are probably right. Poe's law and all that. Of course the corollary to that law is it doesn't actually work unless there really are people who genuinely believe what is being parodied. That includes some of our beloved moderators, in fact; this troll was at +1 when I replied.

And from where I am standing that also includes some of people shaping foreign policy, because the "eff you, we can do whatever we want" attitude is pretty much what the US project internationally.